"Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed so largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both." — Abraham Flexner
Today I had an experience that was very emotionally difficult. After watching this video and reading this infographic and this infographic, I was talking with one of my friends about the disparity between the amount the US spends on the military vs. on foreign aid, education, health care, etc. She is very much a pacifist and once did oppose the military greatly. But in the past year a member of her family was killed while on a tour of duty. That changed everything for her. Because she saw how overwhelmingly the government had provided for her family after his death, she could not emotionally justify taking a single dollar from that cause that was and is so greatly needed by her family and thousands of other. So now, although she is able to mentally separate supporting war and violence from supporting the troops, she unequivocally supports the amount of money the US spends on the military because she sees the opposite as extraordinarily harmful...
